Unless hoarse frogs infest the fenny place j 

 For then he feasts on the loquacious race; 

 Dragg'd from the filthy mud, they croak in vain, 

 And with loud babblings ev'n in death complain. 

 Or when a goose sports on the azure wave, 

 Delighting in the stream her limbs to lave, 

 Or dips her head, and with a clam'rous sound, 

 Provokes the rain, and throws the water round 3 

 The pike arrests the fowl with hungry jaws, 

 And to the bottom of the river draws j 

 Nay, as a boy in the smooth current swims. 

 His teeth he fixes in his tender limbs. * 



* Sir John Hawkins, in his notes on Walton, has given several sforles of 

 the voracity of this fish. The diurnals, which seldom neglect to propa- 

 gate the marvellous, in the year 1800 related, that " a yearling calf wag 

 heard to make an uncommon noise by the side of the river Blackwater, 

 where it had been drinking } on going up to it, there was a large pike hang- 

 ing to its nostrils, which had seized the caif while it was drinking, and 

 which the animal had dragged about fifty yards from the river. One of the 

 peopk disengaged them, by striking the pike with a stone which killed if. 

 There were found in the belly of this voracious fish, a large rat, a perch 

 entire, besides part of several other fish. The pike weighed 3$ pounds.'* 

 The conclusion of the story,, proving there was no provocative from hunger, 

 renders the veracity of the first part doubtful ; otherwise similar relations 

 have been made. A common-sized Jack, placed by mistake on the wrong 

 side of the division in a keep, destroying in a few hours near thirty gudgeons, 

 (a small brace of perch escaping) is a circumstance within my own know- 

 ledge j but, whatever may be its propensity for the gudgeon, the reader 

 must decide the credit due to a newspaper of 1801 for the following story. 

 " A party angling at Suabury, one cf them sat across the head of the boat, 

 as a punishment inflicted on him for wearing his spurs. Another having 

 caught a gudgeon, siuck it on one of the spurs, which he not perceiving, in 

 about a few minutes a large jack bit at the gudgeon, and the spur being 

 *rane-necked, entangled in the gills of the Jack, which, in attempting to 

 extricme itself, actually pulled the unfortunate person out of the boat. He 

 was with difficulty dragged on shore, i nd the fih taken, which was of a pro- 

 digious size." 



The 



